


Filling the Gaps

by Nabielka



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-24 06:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17699183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: Auguste can’t get rid of Damianos, so they might as well talk. One particular subject comes to mind.





	Filling the Gaps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caravanslost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caravanslost/gifts).



By all rights, they ought to have shared the bed.

The old chronicles talked of temporarily allied kings whose beds did not separate them at night upon a diplomatic summit, a mutual vulnerability intended as a guarantee of a certain level of good faith as well as a message to those opposed to the improvement of relations at any given time. True, it was a custom more for the days of Auguste’s forefathers, having fallen away in the days of King Edgard, who, after his ordeal at the hands of his half-brother, could hardly be expected to lie alongside the Queen of Akielos in such a manner, but so too had the very of idea of a man travelling through time been long consigned to the less notable chronicles. 

And yet Damianos claimed to have done so. Worse, he claimed to be married to Laurent. 

Laurent, with his watchful eyes and his quick smile when it came to Auguste; Laurent, who Auguste remembered as some mixture of six and seven and eight, holding tight onto his very fast pony, and how happy he had always been to win; Laurent, with his fair hair and regular features, and Damianos, who kept his own harem and whose sword had been bloodied upon scores of Veretians. 

It beggared belief. It had only been a few years ago that Laurent had declared that he would leave all the business of courtship and the continuance of their line to Auguste, satisfying himself with books. Auguste had laughed and given the usual answer one gave to children and adolescents, with the dismissal that struck every child and was forgotten by every adult, which was that he might come to feel differently in time. Still, it had been an idle discussion, and since he had seen no signs of Laurent changing his mind, Auguste had come to consider that he might have been wrong; after all, their uncle likewise seemed to be a man lacking in amorous inclinations. 

He supposed that Damianos, who had a full mouth and a soldier’s bulk and the sort of face that might have made him appear sympathetic had he not been the Prince of Akielos who cut swathes across their army, might have been an object of attraction to somebody. It was harder to think of it being Laurent; harder still to contemplate him in a union that Auguste could not imagine holding any affection or respect. In that moment, there was much Auguste would have given so that he would not have to face Damianos and hear him talk of such a marriage. 

Every time he heard his brother’s name from Damianos’ lips made him wish for steel in his hand. He was not a man wholly deprived of pettiness. He had thrown him a pallet rather than allow him to sleep by his side as he might have with Laurent, and hoped for Damianos to give him some pretext. 

Indeed, the necessity of keeping Damianos somewhere he wouldn’t be seen by the army or the court had been made clear quickly enough, the necessity of keeping him in sight even earlier. By virtue of his position and age, the dubious honour had fallen to Auguste, for his father was more likely to be disturbed in the night and his uncle was not a fighting man. Nobody had commanded him to consider Damianos to be inviolate. 

Damianos, who must have possessed some intelligence, if not enough to have hidden away and made his way across to the Akielon camp, had accepted the pallet with a smile that so hinted at private amusement that it infuriated Auguste, and was even now lying on it, his face turned to the ceiling as though he did not feel how much further he was from it than Auguste himself. Perhaps he found it an amusing change; if Laurent had found himself in a position where he had had to marry Damianos, he would surely not have been in a position to deny him his bed. 

The thought made Auguste’s stomach drop, but it was the role of kings and princes to face up to the worst without flinching, to do whatever it took to serve Vere’s interests. He could do no less for his brother. Even this man he did not trust might tell him something of how he could try to protect Laurent, and how to prevent whatever circumstances had made Laurent sign his life away into his hands. 

He could not see Damianos’ face, and was glad for it. Even so, he turned in his direction as he spoke, holding himself as tense as though the blow were to be physical. “Tell me about your marriage.”


End file.
